Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for steering traffic in a wireless communication system.
Related Art
3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) is an improved version of a universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) and is introduced as the 3GPP release 8. The 3GPP LTE uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) in a downlink, and uses single carrier-frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) in an uplink. The 3GPP LTE employs multiple input multiple output (MIMO) having up to four antennas. In recent years, there is an ongoing discussion on 3GPP LTE-advanced (LTE-A) that is an evolution of the 3GPP LTE.
A wireless communication system may provide a service to a terminal through a plurality of access networks. The terminal may receive a service from a 3GPP access network such as a mobile wireless communication system. Further, the terminal may receive the service from a non-3GPP access network such as WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) or a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network).
Generally, the terminal may establish connection with a 3GPP access network to receive the service. Meanwhile, when traffic overload is generated in a 3GPP access network, if traffic to be processed by the terminal is processed by another access network, that is, the non-3GPP access network, the whole efficiency of the network may be improved. As described above, changeable process of the traffic through the 3GPP access network and/or the non-GPP access network refers to traffic steering so that the traffic is changeably processed through a 3GPP access network and/or a non-GPP access network.
For the traffic steering, a policy for interworking of the 3GPP access network and/or the non-GPP access network such as an Access Network Discovery and Selection Function may be configured in the terminal. The above policy is managed independently from an interworking policy configured by the network.
When at least one interworking policy is configured, the terminal takes into consideration at least two traffic steering rules for traffic steering, which may cause collision between the rules. Accordingly, the terminal cannot normally perform traffic steering, so that traffic is inefficiently processed or is not processed. Accordingly, the present invention suggests a method capable of handling at least two traffic steering rules to perform traffic steering when the at least two traffic steering rules are provided to the terminal.